Secrets
by imaginary iby
Summary: This story is a look at Abby's past and how she feels about her friends at NCIS. It also deals with Gibbs' return from Mexico and the revelation of an important secret. There's something in here for every shipper, as it's a close friendship piece.


I reference a story that I wrote over on livejournal, so I'm going to provide a tiny explanation for .net readers. My idea was that Abby and Gibbs met at a lake at night; he was fishing, she was skinny-dipping. She hurt her ankle and, despite the strange nature of the situation, he helped her out. All of my stories can be found at the livejournal of imaginaryiby, if anybody is interested.

Abby looked out over the squad-room, her gaze contemplative. Agents, with their guns strapped to their waists strode purposefully to and from the lifts, the call of crime scenes never ending. Scientists wearing white lab-coats scuttled around, noses in folders.

It was a funny sort of family, really. Even though it had been many years since she'd made the decision to enter into the world of federal crime investigation, the fact that she considered characters as colourful and surreal as an Israeli ex-spy and a former Marine sniper amongst her closest friends still made her laugh.

Tony was everything she wasn't, dressed to the nines and suave. Yet when they were together, it all melted away and nothing but hilarity remained; kindred spirits in immaturity. Ducky had taken to telling them not to blow anything up whenever they left the office together to get lunch. When Gibbs had been in Mexico, the ground beneath her had been rocky, but Tony had always checked to see she was still standing, propping her up with caffeine and horror movie marathons at his house. Every Thursday night, work allowing, they'd been getting together to teach each other ASL and Italian. He always tried to get her to say something rude or sexual, but she'd quickly cottoned on. Tony was like her in that he was a goof and serious at the same time; a little boy, except when he held a gun or put himself into the mind of a murderer, the way she played ear splitting music whilst studying blood and bullet trajectories.

Of all of them, McGee was the most like her. Computers, maths and science; it all came as easily to him as it did to her and in that she found companionship. The others respected and deferred to her results in the lab, but they didn't necessarily understand them. It felt nice to name a chemical and know that someone in the room understood. She rarely made a big deal about how complicated some of her work was, because everybody sacrificed sleep and missed birthdays to solve cases. Sometimes though, when her ego needed tending to, he was the one who understood the complexity of her job; that not just anybody could do what she did, even those trained in the field. On crappy days, he was the guy she turned to when the X-Box came out.

Her friendship with Ziva was perhaps the most unusual. It was nice to have another girl around to get the boys in line, even though Abby had been angered by her audacious attempt to replace Kate. Ziva had pushed and prodded, helping Abby piece together the fragments of the mystery metal suit-case that she'd been tasked to reassemble, the way others might help their friend bake a cake. Ziva had made it clear that she had no intentions of filling anybody's shoes but her own and that had calmed Abby. In the end, it came down to one kick-ass chick aligning themselves with another. Both weren't afraid to punch. When you took away the guns and the knives, Ziva had a goofy side to her, which Abby recognized and played along with. Sometimes they'd coordinate fake flirting with Tony, teasing him and trying to lick his neck.

In Ducky she found eccentric friendship. They were scientists with a combined wealth of information, constantly called upon to support the team. Whilst McGee understood her job from a technical point of view, Ducky understood it from a personal one. They were the ones who were left behind at the office, with nothing to do but wait and hope that everything went to plan and that all their agents would return to them. Ducky understood her need to come up with answers, to pick the evidence apart. He understood the feeling of responsibility for the team, the need to prepare them before sending them out into the world. In Ducky, she also found someone who understood the difficulties of applying scientific findings. It wasn't as simple as discovering a chemical on someone's shirt or a break in a particular part of someone's bone, it was about understanding the implications of that chemical and break and then figuring out how to apply it to the case. Every time the team came back to the office in one piece, they'd catch each other's eye and smile.

Ever since she'd met him, Abby had trusted Gibbs with her life and heart, knowing that he'd take care of them and keep them safe. There were secrets in her past that didn't provide the groundwork for a bouncy, bubbly forensic scientist with a propensity for black and buckles; secrets that he understood. Gibbs had found her in the lake, her ankle sore but her spirits high and pulled her into his boat, naked as the day she was born. The fact that he'd found her skinny-dipping meant that many of the formalities of introduction had simply been skipped; they'd steam-rolled right onto the intimacy of coffee sharing and never looked back. A lot of people didn't understand how she, of all people, had managed to gain not just professional respect but friendship from the man who was hard to please and harder to get close to. Gibbs was unforgiving of mistakes, so the fact that he thought she was free of them made her smile and work even harder to come up with answers. It was a strange, inexplicable kind of companionship, conversation coming not from what they had in common, like with McGee or Ducky, but from a sense of comfort. She made Gibbs laugh and he took care of her.

As she looked down at the team, desks reshuffled to their previous ranks, she contemplated sharing another of her secrets. People were trying to find their place in the team again, readjusting. McGee had thought Tony would be smarting from the demotion, but Abby knew he liked working with Gibbs, as evidenced by his turning down his own team to work with him again. Abby knew more about the workings of the agents and the dynamics of the agency than people thought. She knew that Ducky was angry, thinking that his longtime friend had picked up and left with little remorse, and furthermore hadn't trusted him enough to confide in him about the death of a wife and child. Abby had tried to explain that some things were personal; some wounds were dealt with in private, too sacred to give to other people and that it wasn't always an unhealthy way of doing things. Secrets revealed themselves if and when the time was right.

She'd thought she'd never tell a soul, but looking down at them, looking down at Gibbs, who still closed his eyes in pain and remembrance when he thought nobody was looking, she knew it was time. Her secret was no longer about her, but about someone else and if revealing it could do some good, rather than cause her pain, then it was worth it.

She pushed off from the railing and headed down the stairs, her black skirt twirling around her knees. She'd been experimenting with a goth/peasant look, so whilst the skirt she wore was multilayered, with excess material to make it swirl around her when she twirled, and she did twirl, her singlet top quite daringly declared that others had to get off her cloud, a call back to her Rolling Stones hey-day.

Jumping the last four stairs, bare feet that Jen let her get away with on a Sunday pushing into the carpet, she bounced to Gibbs' desk, pausing to watch her skirt settle around her knees again before speaking.

"I'm glad you're back."

Gibbs, who'd been rifling thought a desk compartment, looked up at her in surprise.

"You should know that Tony kicked ass. Still does."

His eyebrow rose, his hand withdrawing slowly from the drawer.

Abby had decided that she wasn't going to spout off about Tony's performance as Team Leader. She thought he'd done great, but men were funny and he might not want her protesting his demotion. Still, she couldn't restrain herself completely.

"I'm sure he did."

Abby nodded, knowing that he understood her warning that things weren't the way they used to be.

"I've been thinking about everything that's happened the past few months. Everything that's happened to you. Everything that we've found out." She knew her point needed to be made soon, because the territory he thought she was entering was one he was uncomfortable with.

"I don't know if it helps. Probably not, but misery loves company." She closed her mouth, opened it, and then closed it again, the decision resting on the tip of her tongue. Fight or flight. Fight or flight.

She looked down at him and licked her lips, clearing her throat. She squared her shoulders. "You didn't know this, but when I was sixteen, I fell pregnant. I had twins; a boy and a girl. They're out there in the world somewhere." She nodded out the window to the city beyond. "I don't know where. They're together though, I made sure of that. I've never regretted giving them up; they needed more than I could give them at that age. Not until I found out about Kelly. I started to think about what it would have been like if I'd raised them…you know what conclusion I came to? I've got a big heart Gibbs and I can love just about anybody, but some of my friends messed their kids up pretty badly at that age and I didn't want to take the chance. I'm not going to say it's ok, tell you that things get easier. I'm going to tell you that I'm sure you raised a beautiful girl, because you've got a big heart too."

She smiled, her expression calm as her cheeks dimpled. She knew something had shifted, that the team was looking at her differently, shocked. Sometimes some of them forgot she was an adult, ignorant of her capacity to understand human interaction.

"I didn't tell you because it was personal. My secret, but now it's yours too. And theirs, I suppose." She looked over her shoulder at Tony and McGee, who were still, standing in front of the filing cabinet, then at Ziva and Ducky, by the plasma. "That's ok though, after fifteen years I'm ready to share."

She turned, her skirt twirling around her and with a smile, walked towards the elevator.


End file.
